There you go. The only time I *did* have to replace any was on the V8. For
some years there would come a time when it would not cold start, but I
discovered fitting a new set of plugs (in desperation the first time) always
'cured' it. However each set of plugs would only last a few thousand miles
then it would happen again. I always had to be somewhere when this happened
so never had time to diagnose, so took to keeping a new set ready gapped in
the car. Then one day it happened when I was just going for a spin, so did
some diagnostics with a timing light and found it was flashing fine on the
coil lead when cranking, but on none of the plug leads. Had a spare cap
(the rotor was nearly new anyway following a Current Owner brain fart),
fitted it, and away we went, and its been fine since. I put it down to the
gradual rise in HT voltage as the plugs age, and at some point, although
well within the normal voltage for the plugs, it exceeded the breakdown
voltage of the cap. I say 'only', but I did replace the cap and rotor on my
daughters seven or so year old Metro. This was spluttering and misfiring
when pulling away from a standstill, which caused her some palpitations when
she was trying to get across a main road. Again clipping on the timing
light and revving it hard showed flashing on the coil lead but not the plug
leads, and again a new cap and rotor fixed it. However the same situation
on my Scimitar GTE turned out to be an undocumented feature by those
cheapskates at Ford who didn't bother fitting a ground wire for the points
plate inside the distributor. I've only ever had pukka OE parts in the
ignition except for leads, for these I always use silicone cored as they are
so much more reliable and long-lived than the original carbon string type,
which are humongously expensive to boot.
PaulH.
----- Original Message -----
> You astonish me.
>
> I have found that the one set of items that do require regular replacement
> are the cap and rotor...
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